Tel Beth-Shean: History and Archaeology AMIHAI MAZAR Tel Beth-Shean is one of the most extensively explored biblical sites in the Land of Israel: two expeditions excavated the site over many years, yielding vast quantities of archaeological data. This, together with the limited number of textual sources, makes Beth-Shean an intriguing site for research. The following article provides an overview of the textual sources and archaeological data relating to all periods of occupation at the site through the end of the Iron Age, and a short discussion of the relationship between the textual and archaeological sources. Beth-Shean in the Written Sources Egyptian Texts The earliest reference to Beth-Shean may appear in the Egyptian Exe- cration Texts, although the reading is disputed. 1 The city is mentioned in the topographic list of Thutmose III at Karnak (No. 110: bt š’ir). 2 Beth- Shean appears only once in the Amarna letters of the 14th century, re- ferred to as bit ša-a-ni in a letter from Abdi-Heba, ruler of Jerusalem (EA 289). 3 After mentioning Gath Carmel as the city ruled by of Tagi, Abdi- Heba notes that the men of Gath comprise the garrison in Beth-Shean, that is, his enemies make up the Pharaoh’s protective forces to the north. Further on, Abdi-Heba connects Tagi to the sons of Lab’ayu, the ruler of Shechem, in the context of stirring up hostility against the Pha- raoh. A petrographic study of the Amarna letters has revealed that while most of the tablets of Abdi-Heba’s letters were made of local hill- country clay, one was made of Jordan Valley clay (EA 285), perhaps 1 Cf. Mazar/Mullins (2007), 1–2 (with references). 2 Cf. Simons (1937), 27–44; Aharoni (1979), 156–166, esp. 163; Redford (1992), 156–160. 3 Cf. Moran (1992), 332–333; Pritchard (1950), 489; Aharoni (1979), 170–176. One God - One Cult - One Nation. Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives, ed. by R.G. Kratz and H. Spieckermann in collab. with B. Corzilius and T. Pilger, BZAW 405, Berlin/New York, 2010